Early Life Exposure to Air Pollutants and Childhood Asthma

This manuscript summarizes and comments on recent studies linking prenatal and early postnatal exposure to air pollution and childhood asthma.

Recent human cohort studies linked early life exposure to air pollutants with epigenetic modifications in airway epithelial cells, revealed a novel epigenetic convergence point for tobacco smoke exposure and genetic predisposition to asthma, uncovered novel serum biomarkers of air pollution exposure, and new airborne toxic compound combinations with relevance to asthma. A new mechanistic study in mice has revealed that transmission of asthma predisposing information from the air pollutant-exposed mother to offspring occurs via NK cells. Recent studies uncovered novel biomarkers and mechanisms of pollutant-induced asthma susceptibility in early life. Although valuable discoveries were made, knowledge on the impact of early life air pollution on asthma remains far from complete. There is a need for more mechanistic studies to better understand how environmental information is sensed, processed, encoded, transmitted between cells, tissues and generations, and transformed into biological outcomes.